The politics of immigration / Keeping track of Meg and Steve on the campaign trail

Before someone is elected governor, voters get the chance to measure that person by watching how they campaign. How do they treat their opponent? How do they treat the issues? How do they treat the truth?

On immigration reform, the Republican candidates for governor – Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman – come up short. Their past comments reveal both to be essentially moderates on immigration. But, to win the GOP primary, both evidently feel they must undergo extreme makeovers and emerge as fire-breathing restrictionists. That makes for some clumsy moments.

In the process, the candidates are not just embarrassing themselves but undermining any efforts that the Republican Party nationally might make to Latino voters, who represent 20 percent of the electorate.

What a shame. There are Republican policies and ideas that might resonate with Latino voters, but we’ll never know because Latinos are run out of the tent by incendiary rhetoric.

The latest log on the fire is a new television commercial from Poizner contending that his opponent, who has a huge lead in public opinion polls, has the same policy on illegal immigration as President Barack Obama because both Obama and Whitman support “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. The ad features videotape from October 2009 in which Whitman called for a “fair program” that would allow millions of illegal immigrants a shot at earned legal status if they meet certain conditions. So, in Poizner’s world, Whitman and Obama are joined at the hip.

But now it gets more complicated because Whitman appears to be singing a different tune. In an obvious attempt to pander to the right wing, she tells Republican audiences that she is “100 percent against amnesty, no exceptions.”

You might think that not only has Poizner tied her to Obama, but has also caught her in a flip-flop. But it’s even more complicated than that. What Whitman described in that videotape isn’t amnesty but earned legal status. Besides, Poizner has no room to talk because he himself supported President George W. Bush’s approach to immigration reform, which mirrored Obama’s approach. So Poizner has also flipped on the issue and is also tied to Obama. Whitman might be able to use that as a defense, but even that is complicated since she herself doesn’t seem to understand the difference between amnesty and earned legal status. After all, Whitman is running against “amnesty” – something that no one in Washington is even talking about.

Whew!

Perhaps there’s a reason that immigration is a federal issue and that governors – or those running for governor – do best when sticking to state issues. Like that $20 billion budget deficit none of the candidates are saying much about.